The 7th army

When my painted Empire reached a playable size (well over 2 years ago now - in fact, not that long before I started this blog), they became my 6th painted army. They had been preceded by High Elves, Wood Elves, Orcs and Goblins, Dwarfs, and Ogres. As anyone who has been following this blog can attest, I then made a point of focusing on painting Empire, building them up to an excessive size.

Through all of this, there have been two other armies sitting in cupboards, waiting for their time in the sun. Those armies are Bretonnians and Dark Elves, and they have been waiting their turn for years. Both have had the odd model painted now and again, but I've never gotten around to sitting down and painting up a proper force of either.

Well, it seems like that is about to change. Apparently deciding that it was about that time of the year again, Owen the Hippo appeared, brandishing paintbrushes with wild abandon and challenging all and sundry to another round of Duelling Paintbrushes. This time it was decided that the challenge would take place in October, and the 1000 points that each participant painted would be required as part of one of the 1500 point armies being used for the Warhammer World Series in mid-November.

I had a few options that I could focus on for the challenge, however the main contenders were to flesh out my Empire Ogres to a fully autonomous 1500 point Ogre Kingdoms army, or to finally get around to working on one of those long-shelved (although never really forgotten) armies. When Nick Gentile (of The Dwellers Below) expressed interest in painting up a High Elf force for the challenge, it seemed logical to pair them off against an army of their arch enemies, the Dark Elves. We then set about plotting a pair of well-matched armies for the occasion.

About halfway through the process it occurred to us that the rumour mill was strongly suggesting that the next army to be updated for Warhammer Fantasy was the Dark Elves, and that this major overhaul was meant to be occurring in early October. In other words, all our careful list planning was about to become meaningless. It sounds like nearly all the models are being updated as well. The timing was less than ideal. Not to be deterred, I decided that the chances are good that a relatively similar list can be planned out when the new army book is available, and I would just work with the existing list in the meantime.

In terms of what I have to work with right now, here is my mighty Dark Elf army as it currently stands:

All my painted Dark Elves. About half of which are assassins...

Axemaster 2013 Aftermath – Day 2

So my first day at the tournament had been less than ideal. I had scraped one very marginal win, but was on only 20 of a possible 60 battle points coming into day 2. At this point Nick's rather unusual comp system started to take effect, with half of everyone's comp scores applied before the draw was determined for round 4. The other half of the score would be applied at the end of the tournament. With my pretty poor list, this meant I would effectively be getting a bit of a boost up the tables. I guess this could be a good thing...

Axemaster 2013 Aftermath – Day 1

It's taking me a while to get around to my tournament reports nowadays, so once again I will declare my intentions to keep things briefer than normal. Who knows, I might even achieve it this time...

My Wood Elf army list for Axemaster 2013

I've discussed my army list before, however I will repeat it here for convenience:

• Highborn on Great Eagle with Longbow, Light Armour, Shield, Helm of the Hunt, Stone of the Crystal Mere, Ogre Blade, Potion of Foolhardiness
• Glamourweave Spellweaver (Level 4, Lore of Beasts) on Unicorn with Longbow, Dragonbane Gem
• Noble (Battle Standard) with Asyendi's Bane, Hail of Doom Arrow
• Branchwraith
• Branchwraith
• Branchwraith with Cluster of Radiants
• 10 Glade Guard with Standard, Musician, Banner of the Eternal Flame
• 10 Glade Guard with Standard, Musician
• 16 Dryads
• 15 Dryads
• 12 Wild Riders with Standard, Musician, Gleaming Pendant
• Treeman
• Treeman
• Great Eagle

I went into the tournament with pretty modest expectations. We will see how these panned out.

The Campaigner Interview

The Campaigner is a relatively new magazine covering all things wargaming and miniature-related. Recently I was interviewed as the Featured Hobbyist in Issue 5, which is available for free online. You can read about it here. Also included in the issue is an interview with Owen and Grot, from Terrain for Hippos. Go check it out!

In other news, I have started collating the photos I took at Axemaster last weekend, but I'm yet to start writing the tournament report in earnest. In the meantime, here are a few shots of the models I updated as part of my preparation.

2 units of Glade Guard with their horrible 15-year-old paint jobs updated a bit.

The Treeman on the right is nothing new, but the one on the left was hurriedly updated on the Friday night to make him a bit more presentable and a better match for his mate.

My Spellweaver. She is not newly painted, but this rather flawed army list was mainly her fault. She filled my head with silly ideas about lots of Dryads and Beasts magic. She has a lot to answer for...

Warhammer World Series 2013

Last year we tried running a tournament with a difference, and it went so well that it is happening again this year, in an expanded 2-day format. Here is the player pack....

16-17 November

Warhammer Fantasy 8th edition rules

1500pt pre-determined armies (read below)

2 days, 7 games

$50 (late entry)

Preparing for Axemaster

Axemaster is now only a bit over a week away, so I finally had to submit my army list the other day. General opinion seemed split as to whether I should take Wood Elves or Orcs and Goblins, but in the end the decisive factor was that the Orcs were going to be a bit too much work to get ready in time. After fidgeting with Wood Elf lists for a while, this is what I eventually submitted:

• Highborn on Great Eagle with Longbow, Light Armour, Shield, Helm of the Hunt, Stone of the Crystal Mere, Ogre Blade, Potion of Foolhardiness
• Glamourweave Spellweaver (Level 4, Lore of Beasts) on Unicorn with Longbow, Dragonbane Gem
• Noble (Battle Standard) with Asyendi's Bane, Hail of Doom Arrow
• Branchwraith
• Branchwraith
• Branchwraith with Cluster of Radiants
• 10 Glade Guard with Standard, Musician, Banner of the Eternal Flame
• 10 Glade Guard with Standard, Musician
• 16 Dryads
• 15 Dryads
• 12 Wild Riders with Standard, Musician, Gleaming Pendant
• Treeman
• Treeman
• Great Eagle

Total Army Cost: 2599

The list above may well confuse some people. It's a bizarre combination of relatively competitive choices and silliness. I'll try to explain some of it for you. The worst decision in the army is the level 4 mage. Putting her on a Unicorn (and consequently upgrading her to Glamourweave kindred) costs 85 points and really just makes it harder to protect her. But I converted a model for her years ago, and she's one of my favourite conversions. She was one of the reasons I decided to use Wood Elves. 

Now what?

I made a resolution at the start of the year that I would use an army other than Empire at at least one tournament this year. There are a number of events coming up in Melbourne, however with my resolution not to go overboard with tournaments this year, I am only really expecting to enter one of them - Axemaster. That being the case, it seems to be crunch time if I am going to follow through on my resolution.

Axemaster is a 2600 point tournament running on the 7th-8th of September. The player pack can be found here. It's a well-established event and traditionally tends to be one of the largest on the Victorian calendar. I'm actually the defending champion from last year, but given I have no intention of trying to win anything this year, I expect someone else will take the title. All I need to worry about is what I want to use instead of Empire...